


You Can't Always Get What You Want (You Get What You Need)

by Silent-Wordsmith (Shatteredsand)



Series: Awkward Conversations [7]
Category: Carmilla (Web Series)
Genre: F/F, Multi
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-02-07
Updated: 2015-10-10
Packaged: 2018-03-10 21:51:25
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 6,940
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3304703
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Shatteredsand/pseuds/Silent-Wordsmith
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>It's not all orgasms and death matches, you know...</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Drive Me Home

**Author's Note:**

> Still not affiliated with “Carmilla the Series”. Tres tragique, I know.

For the record, this is not Danny’s fault. It’s Kirsch’s. Because Kirsch had been upset about Will being an asshole—Danny doesn’t know how he manages to be surprised about that fact every single time, but he does—and he had looked at her and then demanded that she “be a bro”, and get him wasted. And she’d tried to talk him out of it, had pointed out that he lives with a house full of bros. Those bros weren’t Danny Lawrence, though, and those bros didn’t hate Will the way Danny does.

So, since Danny is the only one of Kirsch’s bros who is not also one of Will’s bros, she had been volunteered to be his shoulder to lean on while he bitched about Will’s stupidity and how “orgasms are super awesome and stuff, but would it kill him to do something other than suck or fuck on date night?”

Which is how she’s come to be here, outside a bar at two am, with a Kirsch so drunk he cannot stand on his own and way more information on his sex life than Danny has ever or will ever need or want.

Werewolf constitution means that she can, and takes pleasure in usually, drink a college frat boy under the table. But Kirsch had been bound and determined to get as shit-faced as possible and that Danny do the same. So, while she’s not nearly as bad as he is, she also definitely does not trust herself anywhere near the wheel. She’s so not risking her life, or her license, over Kirsch’s romantic woes. And that means that she needs to get them a ride.

Laura’s phone rings and rings and rings before cutting to voicemail. Danny doesn’t leave a message, just calls again. And again. Until finally she picks up.

“Hey. Sorry about the time and all, but I’m with Kirsch outside of the Dragon’s Den and neither of us should be allowed to even think about operating a car right now. Can you pick us up?”

“Be there in ten, Gingersnap.”

The call ends before Danny can even open her mouth to ask why Carmilla is answering Laura’s phone, and fuck. The last person Danny wants to see her when she’s drunk is Carmilla fucking Karnstein. She spends the allotted ten minutes preparing herself for an endless onslaught of jokes about her inability to properly control her “freakish” limbs and whatnot. She just hopes that the bloodsucker knows where to draw the line…

It’s going to be very awkward to explain to their girlfriend that she accidently-on-purpose murdered Carmilla in a drunken rage.

Sometime later, Danny isn’t actually sure if it’s ten minutes or not, there’s a pale hand waving in front of her face. Following the hand up a leather-clad arm leads to long, silky tresses and the face of the person Danny wants to see least in the whole, wide world.

“You smell like a distillery.” Carmilla says when Danny’s eyes focus on her face. Danny wants to know where she gets off having a jawline like that. She’s pretty sure it’s a crime, somewhere, to have the perfect a jawline. Which, also, what a stupid fucking thing to be perfect.

Like her eyebrows. Who the fuck has perfect eyebrows?

“Scare-Hottie!” Kirsch promptly throws himself at Carmilla, like that’s ever been a good idea in the history of the human race. Carmilla, with an ease and grace that makes Danny just the littlest bit dizzy, steps back and to the side, leading to Kirsch’s inevitable face-plant. “Ow.”

“That” Carmilla points disdainfully, “is your problem.”

“Still not as big an ass as her brother.” Kirsch mutters, rolling over onto his back.

“Let’s go, Red Rover. Send the moron on over.” Carmilla says with an eyeroll and a scoff, gesturing to a car. It’s black as the night and sleek as hell. Danny can only assume it’s Carmilla’s, though where Carmilla got it from or why she needs one when she can literally travel as a poof of acrid black smoke, is a bit beyond Danny right now.

Kirsch is on the ground, still, cackling like a demented school girl at Carmilla’s not even a little bit funny joke.

Danny heaves a sigh, and sets about dragging his ass up and into the car. It’s more difficult than it would be if she were sober, or he was more sober, or if Carmilla would deign to lend a fucking hand. But Danny makes do. When the lumbering Zeta is finally properly secured in the backseat, she all but pours herself into the passenger seat.

Carmilla is behind the wheel in a blink, watching with blatant amusement as Danny struggles a bit with her seatbelt. At some point—a rather quick point, Danny knows she’s not drunk enough to be engaged in a particularly long battle with the damned thing—Carmilla loses patience and leans over to buckle it for her.

Her fingers are quick, agile. Those long, lithe, pale as death in the florescent streetlights finger come up again after the click, brush Danny’s hair out of her face. “Do not throw up in my car, Lawrence.”

Danny’s not even nauseous, the fuck. “I’m fine.”

“Good.” The hand moves away again, Danny absentmindedly starting to follow after it before she remembers herself.

The drive is quiet. Kirsch is staring at his own hands and muttering under his breath about…something. Danny thinks it might be a math thing, but she couldn’t say for sure. But that’s the only sound other than the gentle rumble of the engine.

They pull to a stop outside the Zeta House, where Will is standing at the curb. He looks…not great, actually. Maybe it’s the lack of smarmy smirk or the bitter set of his jaw. “Callah. Thanks for bringing him home.”

“Take better care of your things, William.” Carmilla gives her not-brother the hardest look Danny has ever seen grace the vampire’s features—and she’s seen the vampire prepared to rip out her spine—“Or I’ll take them away from you.”

Will starts to snarl, flash of fang in the starlight, but then he seems to swallow it down. Bows his head. “Countess.”

Carmilla hits the gas without another word, and Danny is not sober enough to try and parse through whatever the hell that was. Carmilla’s family issues are so not Danny’s concern.

“The Lodge is the other way.” Danny points out as Carmilla continues driving.

“I know. I helped build it.”

That…is not something Danny had known, but she can’t find in her to be surprised. “Where are we going then?”

“The dorm.”

Wow, such an abundance of information. Danny can’t keep up.

“Why?”

“Because I don’t trust you not to choke on your own vomit like an idiot child, and Laura will be angry with me if she finds out I left you alone to die.”

Well, first of all, rude. Danny is not anywhere near that level of drunk. Second of all, _rude_. Danny is not anywhere _near_ that level of drunk.

“Go fuck yourself.”

“You’re welcome.”

Outside the dormitory, Danny shrugs off the hand Carmilla offers to help steady her, and the leech doesn’t attempt it again. Which, yes. Good. Danny may be more than a little intoxicated, but she still has her fucking pride, and she’s more than capable of walking to room 307 without her girlfriend’s girlfriend propping her up.

“Try not to wake her up, Beansprout. She has a test in the morning.”

Danny nods with the utmost seriousness because of the two of them she’s probably the one who understands the pressures of college life better. Carmilla is three hundred years old and has graduated from Silas a dozen times over the years. She has all the time in the world to go back, do it again, if she messes something up. Danny knows that for her and Laura, they really only get the one chance.

The fairy lights are glowing dimly, still—always, always, always, Danny doesn’t think there’s ever been a night where they were off—and it’s enough light to see by. Laura is sleeping in her own bed, cocooned in her blankets to offset the beginnings of winter’s chill creeping into the air. She looks adorable, as Danny was pretty much expecting her to.

She shuffles to the middle of the room and decides that the floor is a better option than risking waking Laura up. Once she’s down there, she realizes that she’s going to hate everything tomorrow morning because the floor is every bit as hard and cold as it looks like. It’s worth it though, if it means Laura doesn’t have to worry about yet another academic problem; she’s had to worry about them enough with all the craziness that Silas is overflowing with.

“Now’s not the time to be playing martyr, Red.” Carmilla scoffs before effortlessly scooping her up. Danny nearly squawks in outrage, because how dare she, but she remembers Laura just in time to bite her lip. Carmilla sets her down in her bed with more gentleness than Danny had ever expected from the vampire. “She’ll freak out if you’re passed out on the floor in the morning.”

Carmilla actually makes a good point for once in her life, so Danny decides not to argue. Carmilla wanders out of her line of sight, and Danny thinks she hears the shower starting up. It doesn’t matter. She’s too drunk for this shit. She just needs to _sleep_.

(Later, she will wake up the little spoon in Carmilla’s arms. Later, Laura will show her a frankly horrifying number of candid photos featuring her and Carmilla snuggled together in their sleep. Later, she’ll find a glass of water and two Tylenol waiting at Carmilla’s bedside and Laura will smile like she knows a secret when Danny tries to thank her for that and Laura tells her that she didn’t do it.)


	2. Take Me Out So I Can Take You Home

Danny Lawrence has never been a player. When she dates a person, she _dates them_. She is looking for the romance, for the passion, for the love that will last her the rest of her life. She’s had a one-night stand here or there, because she is still after all human—or, well, mostly—but she’s never toyed with someone’s emotions. Never made them think she wanted them, in all ways, when all she really wanted was what was in their pants.

Maybe that’s what makes seeing Jamie so hard. He had been charming and just the right amount of chivalrous. He’d been her first college love, all the way back in her freshman year and they’d been together for about a year and half before it became clear that it wasn’t going to work. It wasn’t anyone’s fault, not really. She had kept secrets—the wolf under her skin, the sway of the moon—and he’d had a temper that could lash out cruelly, if not violently, and they couldn’t work.

Fondness for him, still, underneath the  bitterness.

And something that isn’t quite jealousy, when she sees the girl on his arm. She doesn’t want him back—still knows all the reasons why they couldn’t ever work, even if she wasn’t deliriously happy with Laura—but, maybe, regret. That her first love—stupid high schoolers hardly count—hadn’t managed to last.

She knows she should be happy for him, the same as she wants him to be happy for her and Laura, but she can’t manage it. Danny Lawrence has never been very good at letting go, even when she knows she should.

Her eyes flit away from him when she sees him turn and spot her. Searches the crowd for Laura. Laura who had gone to get drinks for them. Laura who is the only thing that could possibly make what’s about to happen bearable. Fights the unbidden thought that Jamie might be cruel tonight, as he so often was there at the end, and feed his ego by thinking she’s lying about Laura. She doesn’t want to be the ex that starts throwing punches—she’s better than that, she knows she is—but Jamie has a way of getting under her skin in a way that only Carmilla has ever matched.

“Danny Lawrence!” Jamie greets, wide grin and sparkling eyes.

“Jamie, it’s good to see you.” Danny forces a smile, looks again for Laura. What, was she asking Kirsch to ferment the beer himself before taking a cup?

Sudden presence at her side. She catches the scent of iron and old paper as an arm slings around her waist. Carmilla’s head leaning against her side. Danny moves her arm around her without really thinking about it, wondering if her face is screaming “what the holy hell” as loud as she’s thinking it.

“Who’re your friends, babe?” Carmilla asks, hand slowly slipping from her waist to her ass. Danny rolls her eyes. She needed Laura holding her hand and keeping her grounded, and she got Carmilla copping a feel. She’s not sure what she’s done to piss the gods off recently, but she’s really regretting it.

“This is Jamie Lancaster and…” Danny trails off, Carmilla’s appearance had cut the pleasantries short and she doesn’t actually know the girl’s name.

“Michelle.” She says, eyeing Danny and Carmilla like she isn’t sure whether this is enemy territory or not. “Jaime, I wanna dance.”

Yes. Yes, go dance. Please.

“In a minute, sweetheart. I wanna catch up with Danny real quick.”

Carmilla stretches up onto her tiptoes, whispers with lips brushing against the shell of Danny’s ear, “You looked like you needed saving, Gingersnap. You can owe me one.”

Danny fights the shiver that shoots down her spine, but it’s a losing battle. Carmilla, for all her bitchiness and all the ways Danny wants to strangle her, is still gorgeous. Danny knows what she’s capable of doing with those hands and that mouth, and those fucking seduction eyes are damned effective. She’s gotten used to her body betraying her around Carmilla.

“Ex-boyfriend.” Danny grits out, sub-vocal and jaw unmoving. She knows Carmilla hears her, though, because the vampire has the gall to chuckle darkly before nipping her earlobe.

Danny bites her lip as her eyes shutter closed for a moment. Fucking hell, Carmilla knows her ears are fucking sensitive.

“Carmilla.” Danny growls out. “Behave.”

“No.” Carmilla laughs, though she thankfully lowers herself away from Danny’s ear. “You like me better when I don’t.”

Jamie is looking between the two of them like the pieces are just now slotting into place, and she remembers him being quicker on the uptake than that. Maybe he’s already had a few. “Who’s this then?” He asks like he already knows.

“Carmilla.” Carmilla glances at him dismissively , then back to Danny. “You should finish talking soon. I’d like to be…not talking.”

Artemis. Subtlety really isn’t in the Karnstein handbook at all, is it.

“Carmilla.” It’s a long, drawn out sigh masquerading as speech, but it gets the point across.

“Sorry?” Carmilla doesn’t sound sorry, but then Danny doesn’t think she’s ever heard anything even close to remorse fall off the vampire’s tongue.

“Just.” Danny sighs again, wondering why this has to be so hard. “Play nice, please?”

“Whatever you say, Gingersnap.”

“So, have you been together long?” Jamie asks.

Part of Danny wants to laugh. Because she and Carmilla are _so_ not together. They’re with Laura, and Laura is with them, and, yeah, the sex is all kinds of mind-blowing, but. No. They’re not _together_. The rest of her remembers that she hadn’t wanted to be alone when talking to Jamie, hadn’t wanted to seem like she hadn’t moved on, and telling him that she and Carmilla are fuck-buddies with a girlfriend between them sounds like a blatant lie. So, “Just over a month now.”

Danny’s eyes search the crowd again. Really, where _is_ Laura? She may not be coming off as the loser exe in this equation—and there’s a small, competitive part of her that is taking more pleasure than necessary at the fact that Carmilla is way hotter than Jamie’s new girl—but that doesn’t mean she wants to wait around long enough for Carmilla to stick her foot in her mouth or, more likely, say something that will have them arguing heatedly under their breath and making them look like the world’s most unhealthy couple. So not the impression she wants Jamie to leave with.

“We should hang out again sometime. I miss you, Danny.” There’s no romance in the words, no longing his eyes. It’s a relief. Before the relationship that had imploded spectacularly, they had been friends. Danny doesn’t have too many of those these days, outside of the pack and Laura’s little rag-tag army.

“Yeah, maybe.” Danny is noncommittal on purpose. She kind of does want to hang out again with Jamie, see if they can settle back into friendship with the history between them. But she doesn’t want to do anything that might upset Laura, and she knows that meeting up with exes can be a big no-no, so she has to make sure she talks about it first, that Laura knows exactly what Danny is meeting up with him for. She doesn’t want there to be doubts.

“We could double.” Michelle chimes in, and Danny, Jamie, and Carmilla all wince at the thought. Yeah, no, double dating with an exe is pretty much the biggest no in the history of negation. It’s messy and complicated, and, fuck, she’d have to either explain Laura to Jamie—which, admittedly, might be a bit fun—or explain to Laura why she and Carmilla are going on a date—which, admittedly, Laura would actually probably be thrilled about—and Danny doesn’t really want to expend that kind of effort until she knows whether she and Jamie can even be friends.

“Hmm.” Jamie hums, his face telling Danny that he’s operating on much the same level she is on this matter. He doesn’t want to shut down his girlfriend in front of them, understandably, but he’s not about to sign them all up for that level of torment. Thank the gods for small favors.

Then, finally, finally, Laura makes her appearance, Kirsch and Will in tow. Kirsch and Laura look like they’ve had a few too many; Will looks like alcohol has never dared to touch his tongue, despite the red cup in his hands. Stupid fucking vampires.

“Cupcake, what have you and my _darling_ baby brother been getting up to?”

“Shots!” Kirsch and Laura answer together before promptly falling into a mess of giggles.

Will rolls his eyes at Carmilla’s glare in his direction. “What? Made sure none of the other Neanderthals managed to get their tongue on her, didn’t I?”

“What?!” Danny and Carmilla in unison, the only think they’ve ever agreed on. Laura.

Carmilla is away from Danny, her hand knotted in the hair at the base of Will’s skull, almost faster than Danny can see. “Explain.” There’s a darkness in her tone that Danny hasn’t heard in a while. She doesn’t remember it having quite the same effect on her that it’s having now. Stupid body having stupid reactions to a stupid vampire being stupid.

“She and my boy were doing body shots.” Will’s face is contorted with pain, and Danny wonders if he has a sensitive scalp or if Carmilla is doing something other than just pulling his hair. “Harmless.”

“Danny,” Danny snaps to attention, she doesn’t think she’s ever heard Carmilla use her given name. “Take Laura back home. I need to have a word with William here about the things he is allowed to do and the things that will add his name to our very long list of dead family.”

“Come on, Laur. I think you need your bed right about now.”

“I need you _in_ my bed.” Laura slurs, somehow still managing to be adorable even when she’s a hot mess. “I need you to be less pretty, ya know? It’s distracting.”

Jamie snorts a laugh. “Turn down your swag, Dan. Your girl might get jealous.”

“I’m not jealous.” Laura blinks up at him. “Why would I be jealous?”

“Because I was copping a feel before Will ruined the mood.” Carmilla says, finally releasing her brother with a shove. “Take your idiot and disappear. We’ll be having a conversation about this later.”

Laura looks thrilled about the revelation that Carmilla had been groping Danny’s ass without her, which. One day Danny is going to sit down and try and figure out how the world turned out someone so lovely and so, so full of love as Laura Hollis.

“A little ungrateful, sugar puss. I could have let Jackson drink tequila out of her belly-button.” Will growls.

In half a blink, Carmilla is in his space again, his head dragged down to her ear. Her voice is so low, Danny doubts anyone without preternatural hearing can make out the words, “Don’t think I don’t know about _that_ little indiscretion either, Willy-boy. You don’t think I believe for even half a second that Mother gave permission to turn that dolt, do you?”

Will is three times paler than he normally is—which is saying something, considering his base level is literally “pale as death”—when Carmilla shoves him away again. Danny doesn’t want to think about that. About Carmilla and Will turning other students. About Carmilla being able to threat Will about turning other students. Vampire politics are _so_ not her jurisdiction.

“Bro?” Kirsch says, sloppy, going over to his—boyfriend? Bene-friend? Bro with Bonuses?—whatever.

Laura is gaping after Carmilla with eyes familiarly lust-darkened and Danny just knows that she’s about to say something she maybe shouldn’t.

“I agree with Danny. I need my bed. Now.” Laura reaches out unsteadily, grasping Danny’s and Carmilla’s hands.

“I swear, creampuff, we can’t take you anywhere.” Carmilla scoffs, but she’s smiling. It is, it strikes Danny suddenly, a really nice smile.

“Take me _home_.”

Carmilla’s eyes flicker up to meet Danny’s and fuck, yeah, it’s a really nice smile.

“Come on then."


	3. You Can't Take the Sky From Me

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Sure, everybody knows that Will only turned on Mother during the last half of the battle because he’s a self-serving asshole who saw how it was going to end, but, still, he did. And he’s family. There’s a comfort in that.

The roof of the science building is a refuge. Carmilla doesn’t often need one, now that Mother is gone and The Light has darkened. She finds all the solace she needs in Laura’s arms these days. But, sometimes, the darkness is too all encompassing, the press of three bodies in one twin sized bed too confining, and Carmilla just needs to get _out_.

She doesn’t need to breathe, technically speaking, but she relishes in her ability to do so. There hadn’t been air in the coffin, in the darkness. Just the spelled blood, choking her. She breathes in deep, stretches her arms and legs out just to remind herself that she can. Her limbs are whole and unmarred and she isn’t there anymore. Will _never_ be there again.

“Shouldn’t you be curled up in the lap of your tiny little freshman, kitten?”

Will’s interruption isn’t a surprise. He hasn’t been up here with her for a while now, not since the very beginning of the term before Carmilla had been sent to Laura, but his appearances have always been mercurial. Will comes when Will chooses to come, and she’s never tried to summon him or banish him when the whim takes him here.

Sometimes they watch the stars in a silence companionable and comfortable, all the bad blood boiling between them forgotten for long, drawn out moments. Others, they’d talk, in the way of true siblings, discussions of obligation and manipulation, the heavy burden of Mother lying like an albatross around their necks. Or they’d fight, hissing venomous words and spitting poison just to watch the other flinch under the sting. Or they’d fuck, every now and then, when the loneliness of eternity felt too crushing to bear in solitude and the solace of knowing that all they might love, were they permitted to love, would be taken from them. By Mother and her unyielding desire to crush them to her and no other, by time and its insistence to keep pressing forward without them.

Sometimes, feeling young and reckless and immortal, they would jump. Feel the rushing wind through their hair, the exhilarating flip of their stomachs as the ground rushed up to meet them, the fevered half-dream that maybe this time they wouldn’t survive it. That they might be freed.

  “Shouldn’t you?”

“Tired the poor boy out; he won’t be missing me just yet.” Will sits at the very edge of the building, looking down rather than up. Carmilla wonders if tonight is a jumping night, if she’ll join him this time if it is.

“I missed the stars.” It’s the closest she ever comes to admitting to him that sometimes the coffin still haunts her. He’s her brother, in most ways if not all, but she knows better than to truly confess weakness to him, and the trust between them has never been anything but fragile and so very easily broken. She would trust him not to knife her in the back without some sort of reason, but she’ll never willingly hand him a gun and expect him not to shoot her with it at some point. The base truth of William has always been that he is the most loyal of soldiers, until the very moment it serves him best to be loyal to another; she’d rather limit his available ammunition for when it serves him best to no longer be loyal to her.

“Scorpius is out tonight.”

“So it is. The beast that slew the mighty hunter, chasing after him across the skies for all of time.”

“It was his reward.”

“Forever has never been a reward, William.” Carmilla eyes him quietly. They have been together for eighty years, nearly, since the moment Mother found her in Paris and brought her back here. Sometimes, Carmilla forgets that he isn’t actually much older than that. That their lives are so long that eighty years is a blip, a passing moment. That their young are called fledglings for their first hundred and fifty years, and Will has barely made it to the halfway mark; he’s still a _child_ in the eyes of their kind. “You’re still so young. You’ll learn.”

“Don’t patronize me, Callah.” For once, the name doesn’t sound angry flying from his lips. “I was a soldier in the worst war this world has ever seen before I was a vampire; I’m hardly a naïve child.”

“I’ve lived through more wars than history has deigned to remember. And while I…slept through the invention of the machine gun and the tank and the atomic bomb, I can assure you that warfare never changes. Just the things used to do the killing.”

“You’re too cynical. We’re going to live forever, forever without Mother barking orders at us like dogs. It’s hardly the worst fate in the world.”

Forever is a long time. Longer than Will understands it to be. He’ll begin to grasp the concept in another eighty years or so. Staring down at the grave where his boy rests, never again to wake. It’ll really start sinking in another century after that, when he’s learned how to move on and fall again. When the realization that this new love will end exactly the same way the first had. That they are going to live forever, and that the people who remind them that they have hearts—unbeating or not—are all dying.

Forever feels a lot longer, once you start having things to lose. Will hasn’t had the time to learn that lesson, though he’s just arrogant enough to have convinced himself that he has.

“I’m going to turn him, I think. In a couple of years. If he says yes.” Will is carefully looking down, his eyes focused on some point on the ground.

Carmilla blinks. She honestly hadn’t expected that, though maybe she should have. Will has always been impulsive. Reckless, even. Which is why there’s a baby vampire running around campus right now, Will’s impulsive hurt feelings given teeth.

But this is different. A little less reckless, a little more cautious, a vampire asking permission from the head of their clan to perform a Turning. Carmilla often forgets—remembers to forget, forces herself to forget—that that’s _her_ now.

“If he says yes.” Carmilla agrees. She could be petty and deny him this, but it would only make things worse. Give Will another excuse to bury the blade in her back, speed up the timeline in which it would suit him to do so. If the boy agrees, then, well. He agrees. “I’d want to talk to him first. Make sure he knows what he’s getting into. The rules.”

“I’d tell him that.” Will asserts, like he thinks this is a negotiation. Or, maybe, like he’s offended that Carmilla thinks that he’s turn Kirsch the same way he’d turned Jackson; all bite and blood and no explanation.

“Yes. You would.” Carmilla agrees, because Will is an asshole and he can be cruel and manipulative, but he is not completely soulless. His actions with Jackson had been driven by rage and stupidity; he wouldn’t do the same to Kirsch. Carmilla knows him better than that.“And then _I_ would.”

The addition is necessary, a reminder than Will is a child and she is now, as she always has been, above him in all things. The mantle of authority is something she’s never truly had to bear. She had been murdered before she could become the countess she was meant to be, and then spent the next three hundred years serving dutifully under Mother. But she had been born and bred to lead, one day, and she had learned much at her maman’s knee. The trappings of power don’t interest her, but it wouldn’t do for Will to start thinking he could do whatever he wanted; Carmilla isn’t so sure that the trappings of power _don’t_ interest him.

She has no desire to die so he can make himself a king.

“Countess.” He assents, little bow of his head. There’s something that looks almost like a smile on his face when he looks up at her. “Did you come to jump?”

No, she really hadn’t. If he offers, she will have to decline. Even vampiric bones break, and while her healing is faster than a humans, she would have to stop and explain to Laura how, exactly, she’d managed to break so many bones. And Carmilla knows that jumping off a building means something different to mortals. Means despair. Anguish. Desperation. _Death_.

Carmilla would not subject Laura to that kind of worrying, even if that’s not what it would mean to Carmilla. Not this time.

“No. I told you. I missed the stars.”

Will laughs. He sounds so young, so fucking _human_. Carmilla wonders if maybe Brody Kirsch isn’t actually the best thing that could have happened to Will. She’s far more used to empty displays of bravado or menacing posturing than genuine amusement from him.

 He’s just a child. Maybe it’s not too late to start healing some of Mother’s scars.

“I’m hungry.” Carmilla shrugs, doesn’t look at him when says it. Maybe it’s a weakness, a vulnerability that he’ll use later to betray her, but she can’t not try. He’s still family after all. There’s a comfort in family that has been missing in her life for decades. “We should go find something to eat.”

Out of the corner of her eye, she can see the way his head snaps around and up, dark eyes questioning. He hops to his feet, offers her his elbow like a proper gentleman of her time, of his time, of times long since passed. “Yeah. Alright.”

Heading down from the tower, Carmilla doesn’t think she and Will will ever be what they could have been, will never share secrets and aches, will never trust each other will all their soft parts. But she thinks they can be more than they are, more than a Countess and a soldier beholden to her, more than the broken imbalance of power between them.

 


	4. Chapter 4

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Laura realizes the ultimate downfall of dating her best friends: she can't very well surprise them with sexy underwear if they help her pick it out, now can she.

Laura doesn’t like to think of herself as prone to self-doubt. She is a strong, self-actualized young woman who can inspire a student army into overthrowing their university’s evil dean of students and destroying her cult of light-demon worshipping vampires. Besides, in between classes, the unrelenting weird of campus life, reporting on said weirdness to the rest of the student body, the multiple near-death experiences that inevitably arise from said reporting, and having two incredibly beautiful and intelligent girlfriends, Laura just doesn’t have _time_ to be insecure.

That is not what this is. She’s pretty positive about that. She’s not the most gorgeous girl in existence, that honor is tied up by both Carmilla and Danny, but she’s good-looking. She has a body toned from years of krav maga and puberty didn’t screw her over in any category except height. She’s all set, really.

This is about wanting to look nice. She likes to look nice. Nothing weird about that. Just because she lives with Carmilla and both of her girls have seen her in various states of dishevelment doesn’t mean that it’s not nice to look nice sometimes.

Also, Carmilla has a truly extensive array of lacy underthings that make Laura’s brain melt, and Laura would like to maybe have the same effect on her and Danny upon occasion.

Unfortunately, Laura doesn’t have the unlimited funds that living for hundreds of years accrues. Laura has a small allowance from her overprotective father, most of which really does need to be spent on things like food rather than lingerie. But she’s been setting a little aside for a little while now, and she can afford to go out and splurge a bit. Plus, it’s not like she’s going to want for food if she goes a little overboard. Not with Perry as a friend; girl never met a dish she didn’t want to cook and force-feed to the entire floor.

The problem arises when Laura realizes that she doesn’t have enough friends to do this right. Perry stammers about “appropriateness” and “qualifications” and “maybe you should ask someone else”. LaF’s eyes light up in a frankly disturbing way and they say “ooh, like a series of experiments?” in a way that Laura isn’t a hundred percent comfortable with. And on the list of people that Laura is friends with, who are not also the people she is hoping to surprise and seduce with her new purchases, that pretty much just leaves Kirsch. Which, yeah. No. A _world_ of no. He’s sweet, really. But Laura is not about to invite him to watch her try on sexy underwear.

OooO

“Are you doing anything on Thursday?” Laura couldn’t really say what made her say that to Will of all people. She and Will are not friends. She still remembers, vividly, the way he’d held her still and helpless, his fangs inches from her neck. He helped them in the eleventh hour of the war, though, and Carmilla swears that he’s…not good—because Will is a level of morally gray that makes Carmilla and her apathetic misanthropy seem like a literal white knight in shining armor—but under control. A non-threat. A potential asset against the semi-regular supernatural shit-storm Silas seems to attract. Maybe even an ally, one day, with a little effort on both his and Carmilla’s parts.

But he’s not a friend. Not now, maybe not ever, and why the hell had she thought this would any way except _horribly_?

“I’m free.” Will shrugs, and the fact that he can make a shrug look vaguely predatory is a giant red flag that Laura should back out right now immediately. “Are we predicting unusual levels of death and mayhem on Thursday?”

He sounds hopeful of the prospect, which. Laura needs more friends, and she needs to pick people who don’t get excited about potential carnage.

“Uh, no, actually. According to the astronomy club and the seer-who-definitely-isn’t-psychic-please-stop asking-she-can’t-read-your-future-through-your-palm Thursday is supposed to be pretty calm. Well, for Silas.” Laura can’t meet his eyes, doesn’t know why she’s still talking instead of making a polite excuse to leave.

“But?” Will’s eyes narrow, like he knows something Laura doesn’t want him to know and Laura has to wonder how much of Carmilla’s and Dean Morgan’s jibes at Will being dim and unobservant and incompetent were just the sort of mildly painful but not entirely meant things that family says about each other. Because the look he’s giving her doesn’t scream idiot or inadequate to Laura. It says _predator_.

“I was thinking about going shopping?” Why are words a thing that’s still happening? Just, why?

“And you want me to go?” Suspicion in his eyes now, like he doesn’t trust whatever Laura’s offering him. Which, she isn’t. Offering, that is. Anything. To him. She’s just…making conversation. Yep, that’s it. Just a nice, friendly conversation with her girlfriend’s brother. Nothing unusual, nothing to see here.

“I need more friends.” It’s meant to be muttered hopelessly to herself, but fucking vampire super-hearing—how does she always, _always_ , manage to forget about the super-hearing?—means that Will hears her perfectly.

“Aw. I’m touched.” He sounds sarcastic, but when Laura peeks up at him through the hands she is currently using to shield her face from the world, she thinks he might actually be having an emotion? “I’m going to have to come up with a slew of affectionate nicknames for you. How do you feel about ‘catnip’?”

Ah, yes. That emotion was clearly vindictive glee. Why is Laura even surprised?

OooO

Thursday rolls around, and Laura has pretty much resigned herself to going it alone. Maybe there will be helpful shopping attendants. It won’t be the same, but it’ll be something. And, even if there aren’t, Laura has had this plan for a while now and if there’s one thing Laura Hollis can do, it’s stick to a plan even when literally everything is falling apart.

Only, she’s leaving her last class of the day, fully-prepared to get on the only sometimes physically present on this plane bus into town when she realizes that she’s being followed.

It’s too early for Carmilla to be up, out of bed, and stalking her. Also, Carmilla would skip the stalking and go straight to touching on her while glaring at passing pedestrians. Laura thinks it’s a cat thing, but she doesn’t want to actually say that out loud; she doesn’t think Carm would think it’s as cute as she does.

Danny wouldn’t be following either, she’d just bound up to her and hold her hand and smile all sweet-like. LaF might be doing it, if there’s some kind of science-y explanation at play that Laura doesn’t know about it, but Laura can’t think of a way that following her through the corridors counts as science. Perry wouldn’t take the time, too busy with her own coursework and her responsibilities as Floor Don. And Kirsch isn’t subtle enough.

Which just leaves…

“Hey, chickadee. We doing this now?”

We? This? There is no we in this this. There is only Laura. And maybe a helpful associate. There is definitely no Laura and Will we. That is not what’s happening.

“Uhh.”

Will holds up a set of keys. “You should say yes. I don’t have all night and the bus isn’t solid today.”

“Yes?”

This is going to end so badly. Worse than trying to starve information out of a mostly benign vampire. Laura can feel it in her bones….

OooO

“No. You want the red. Trust me.” Will is actually, surprisingly, good at this? “We see red and we think blood. We think blood and we think sex. You want the red.”

Apparently Laura wants the red.

“Also.” Will gives her throat a pointed look. “You’re going to want something the blood’s not going to ruin.”

“Uh, that’s not a problem. She’s, um, not a messy eater?” Oh gods why is this a conversation they’re having? The sales associates are giving them weird looks—which, to be fair, Laura is pretty well-versed in receiving and ignoring, but still—and she’s in red lacy underthings in front of one of her girlfriends’ brother. And _why_ is this a conversation they are having?

“Oh, is she savoring you, goldfinch?”

“Oh my god, please stop. We aren’t talking about my sex life with your _sister_. We just aren’t.”

He cocks his head to the side, something almost childish in the movement. “Isn’t that what friends do? Help each other pick out outfits and talk about who they’ve slept with, who they want to sleep with? Mutual conquests and the like?”

“Um, mostly I talk with my friends about common interests. You know, Doctor Who, how to stop whatever supernatural shenanigans are currently afflicting the student body…”

“Hmmm.” Will nods, like he’s considering that, then says “You should get the flowered pattern lace in the panty-cut in the dark red. It looks good with your skin tone, makes your ass look absolutely bitable, and it’s her favorite color.”

OooO

It’s not the weirdest day of Laura’s life. That place is now and will—gods above and below willing—forever remain the day she lead the students’ uprising against the Dean. But it’s close.

How many people can say that they’ve been shopping for sexy underwear with their girlfriend’s brother who tried to kill her? How many people would want to?

But Laura got her underwear, and—maybe????—another person she can call friend, so…mission accomplished?


End file.
